Filmmaker John Hughes exited so decisively from the public eye a generation ago, it was as if he knew the time had come for him to go. It was the end of an era in many ways.

Filmmaker John Hughes exited so decisively from the public eye a generation ago, it was as if he knew the time had come for him to go. It was the end of an era in many ways.

The burly and bespectacled writer, director and producer, who died Thursday of a heart attack at 59, made movies that celebrated American ideals even while poking gentle fun at them.

His essential optimism and good humour, expressed in such hit movies as Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Home Alone, seem almost naive in these more anxious and cynical times. The many people mourning his passing this weekend are also mourning their own memories of better days.

Hughes' departure from Hollywood at the dawn of the 1990s, when he chose the quiet life of an Illinois farmer, occurred at the end of a long postwar rise of American fortunes.

The two major recessions, two U.S.-led wars, multiple acts of terrorism and long reign of George W. Bush that occurred since that time coincided with declining American confidence at home and fading influence internationally.

Both Hollywood and indie films reflected the changing times with more jaded humour and darker sensibilities, though directors from Wes Anderson and Kevin Smith to Judd Apatow cite Hughes as an influence for his exuberance alone.

In the halcyon '80s, when the credit "a John Hughes movie" was as recognizable an entertainment trademark as Michael Jackson's moonwalk, the U.S. was seen as a place where you could get away with anything, as long as you kept smiling.

In Ferris Bueller, a teen outwits his teachers and parents, skips school and leads a parade of hundreds of people singing the Beatles' "Twist and Shout." In Home Alone, an 8-year-old accidentally abandoned by his family at Christmas uses his wiles to stop bungling burglars. In Weird Science, teen boys lusting to be with a real woman cook one up in their chem lab. In The Breakfast Club, troublemakers gain control of their lives while serving Saturday morning school detentions.

In Hughes' world, everybody is mostly rich, almost all faces are white and almost everybody resides in the affluent North Shore neighbourhoods of Chicago, America's heartland. The kids dance to rock and pop, but they're rarely hep to hip hop.

Hughes' view of America was a lot like that of Frank Capra, a director with whom he was often compared. In his calmer moments – he was reportedly a tyrant on set – Hughes admitted that most of his characters were based on aspects of himself and his life.

Even though they celebrated an America more imagined than real, Hughes' films often found admirers in the most unlikely of places.

"John Hughes' movies are like the blues, because they give you a better understanding of the facts of life," Chicago bluesman Willie Dixon once said.

Hughes could be cranky to anyone who pushed too hard about the quintessentially American appeal of his movies. He wanted them to be seen as universal.

"So why is Home Alone the biggest movie ever in Turkey?" he once snapped to an interviewer.

It seems almost unbelievable now, but when they were made, Hughes' movies were viewed as anti-authoritarian and even subversive, because they inevitably featured young people (or the young at heart) getting away with some flagrant but poetically justifiable abuse of authority.

Yet Hughes' films eschewed explicit sex and violence (apart from the slapstick kind) and rarely employed profanity, unlike today's comedies where almost every second word is a curse. Hughes enjoyed making up his own humorous epithets – recall a Breakfast Club character calling another a "neo-maxi zoom dweebie."

At the end of the '80s, Hughes shifted toward slightly more adult humour, consciously moving from his teen base. He had a hit with Planes, Trains & Automobiles in 1987, pairing his friend John Candy with Steve Martin in a classic travellers' tale, but he had less box office success with his remaining movies, flopping with Curly Sue in 1991, the final film he directed. He wrote and produced the 1990 megahit Home Alone, but turned over directorial reins to the film and its sequel to pal Chris Columbus.

The world was changing – the Internet was about to hit – when Hughes began winding down his movie career. He confided to a pen pal he was afraid what Hollywood might do to him and his family if he continued his involvement in the industry.

Ultimately, Hughes preferred to live his idealized vision of the American Dream, rather than make movies about it.

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